We have another Halloween costume controversy. Just yesterday we discussed the order of the College of Charleston for students to take mandatory diversity training for dressing as Mexicans and border police. Now fourteen staff at an Idaho primary school have been put on administrative leave for dressing up as a border wall and Mexicans. Superintendent Josh Middleton has declared the costumes to be “insensitive” and “inappropriate” costumes. The costume competition was billed as featuring “the most stereotypical outfits.”

Seven staff from the Middleton Heights Elementary School dressed as characters like the Statue of Liberty and an American eagle while holding a cardboard wall with “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” on it. Others wore sombreros and fake mustaches.

I recently wrote about the growing controversy over Halloween costumes on campuses and beyond over allegations of cultural appropriation. Various colleges have cracked down on costumes deemed inappropriate or insulting or culturally appropriating. There is little consideration of the free speech concerns over such regulations or the differing views of cultural appropriations theories. However, this was not a case of staffs dressing inappropriately in their private lives. This was part of an after-school “team-building activity” among the teachers.

The offensive combination is obvious, though the case again raises the question of a clear standard. Would it have been permissible to go simply as the Wall ? The concern is that teachers and students have to comply with an ill-defined standard, particularly when some costumes could have free speech elements of expression.

84 thoughts on “Idaho School Staff Suspended After Going To Halloween Party As Trump’s Wall and Mexican Stereotypes”

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Leftist social warriors don’t really believe in establishing clear rules of fair play applicable equally to all. That’s not what they want. They want a power position capable of arbitrary, case-by-case decisionmaking, so as to retaliate against any form of dissent. They are proto-Communists and autocrats. Of course, they soon find out how oppressive it is to live under such a vaguely defined authoritarian regime.

I wonder what the reaction here would have been if they dressed as caricatures of average Trump voters? Yes the followed the rules but that sounds like the defense for war crimes that they were, “just following orders.” It was funny, also racist as the two aren’t mutually exclusive. On the scale of importance the whole thing rates about a 3 out of 10.

the other day I found a dashiki someone gave me back in high school but i am too fat to wear it now so I tossed it in the garbage. It would have been fun to wear that to the polls perhaps.

Reminds me I saw several ladies in hijab out at the polls. It’s what you would call a Republican polling place, predominantly. I know at least one is a Republican. She’s Syrian. I like all the Syrians I have ever met, which is more than a handful; but most of them are superbly well educated and came here from well before the civil war.

Do you have all your teeth? For the caricature you understand. The real Trump voter looks like a normal person that’s willing to put up with misogyny, xenophobia, and racism, because they otherwise like him.

enigma – I just watched Tim Black’s latest videocast and although I agree that Jeff Sessions needed to go, I do not think he was the next coming of the KKK like Tim does. And then Tim went on to blame Jeff and Trump for exactly the same things that Obama was doing to blacks.

Paul – There were things Obama did I didn’t like regarding black people. His original stimulus package, designed to save the economy, included providing military weapons to local police forces and incentivizing minor drug arrests which disproportionately affected black people. Not because they do more drugs which isn’t true but because like stop & frisk, they basically only looked for black and brown people. Obama did little to support HBCUs and in some ways was timid to support a black agenda for fear of looking likme the first black President had a black agenda. Trump has no problem focusing on a white one.
Still, to compare what Sessions has already done to Holder and Lynch isnt even close. Sessions when not being berated for recusing himself did more to restore mass incarceration than anyone since Clinton (who may or may not have been compelled to submit to a Republican Congress). Sessions ended all the Consent Decree’s supervising local police forces where he could and ignored those he couldn’t. He literally told local police forces we will let you do what you see fit and won’t second guess you. His personal animus towards marijuana use became a tool for more petty arrests, again disproportionately affecting minorities. He oversaw a policy of searching for black radical organizations while continuing to ignore right wing militias and white nationalists who are more likely to claim American lives than Muslims. Big difference.

enigma – the census form is white-Hispanic and white-non-Hispanic. Mexican is not a race. 😉 And a fence is not a race. I am not sure the fence qualifies in the costume contest. Maybe they should have gone as “dykes on bikes.”